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Lincoln's Birthday, 1907. 



Personal Reminiscences 



OF" 



Abraham Lincoln 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

DR. WILLIAM JAYNE. 



Delivered before the 

Springfield Chapter 

of tine ] ^ ', 

Daughters of the American Revolution, 
February 12, 1907, 

at 



ITlith (Cmnplimrnts nf 

Htnrnht ffithrary 



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Gift 




I do not purpose in my remarks today to proceed 
into any extended relation of the justly celebrated 
political debate between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas 
in 1858, or concerning Mr. Lincoln's administration 
of the Federal Government from 1851 to 1865, because 
both are known to every intelligent and well informed 
person in our whole country, and more esiDecially, as 
the great debate and the transactions of the period of 
the civil war is an open book, with the contents of 
which you all are familiar. 

I purpose to relate facts bearing upon his early 
days and incidents of his life, which are personally 
known to me; incidents which may seem small in 
themselves, but yet serve to show and illustrate the 
habits, traits of disposition and character, the heart 
and head, the humor and melancholy, in a word, the 
peculiar and varied moods in all affairs, great or small, 
private or public, of this pure, kind, gentle, decided, 
and steadfast man. 

He was sensitive and conscientious at all times and 
in every relation of life, and never in youth or man- 
hood did he knowingly do wrong to any one. 

More than forty years have passed since his tragic 
death ; seventy years are past and gone since he bade 
farewell to New Salem and the friends of his early 
manhood and settled in Springfield to commence the 
practice of law with John T. Stuart, his colleague in 
the Illinois Legislature of 1836. Probably there is 
not a man or woman living today who was of adult 



age when Mr. Lincoln left Salem. Before many years 
have come and gone the last person who has taken 
Mr. Lincoln by the hand and looked into that kind, 
familiar face will have passed from earth. 

So it is well that those who knew him should gather 
up facts, great and small, honestly related without 
Ijrejudice or partiality. Let us, in narrating events 
and the story of his life, cling close to truth and the 
man, then those who come after us will know the real 
man — the true Lincoln. 

Let me repeat, if the story of his life is truthfully 
and courageously told — nothing colored or suppressed; 
nothing false either written or suggested — the coming 
generation will see and feel the presence of the living 
man. 

Let us not be over sensitive about his origin and 
ancestry. If his' birth was humble and his extraction 
was from the ordinary class of poor laboring people, 
he knew the severe struggles, the plain living and 
self-denial, which is a priceless discijjline to a man of 
ambition, determined to gain place and power, to up- 
lift the race and benefit his country and mankind. 

Mr. Lincoln was ambitious — a laudable ambition. 
He once said to his closest friend, Joshua Speed, that 
he did not wish to die until the world was better for 
his having lived. 

I think we shall all agree that his was a beautiful, 
blameless and beneficent life. 

Compare his life with that of Napoleon or Bismarck. 
No remembrance of harshness, of cruelty or of innocent 
blood spilt, disturbed his composure. If he made 



mistakes, it was to pardon and save the life of some 
youthful soldier, condemned to be shot for sleeping 
on his post. 

I first met Mr. Lincoln in 1836, more than seventy 
years ago. He was then residing at New Salem, where 
he was deputy surveyor under Thomas Neale and post- 
master of the village. He had served one term in the 
legislature and was a candidate for re-election at the 
coming August election. 

At that time there was something about this un- 
gainly and poorly clothed young man that foretold to 
an observing man a bright future in public and politi- 
cal life. 

After dinner at the Rutledge tavern, when driving 
on the road to Huron, where my father and Mr. N. 
W. Edwards (afterwards a brother-in-law of Mr. Lin- 
coln) had a store; I remember as distinctly as if it 
occurred only yesterday, my father said to Mr. Ed- 
wards: "Edwards, that young man Lincoln will some 
day be Governor of Illinois." I, only a lad ten years 
of age, thought my father was daft. I had seen at 
Sj)ringfield two Governors of Illinois, Ninian Edwards 
of Belleville and Joseph Duncan of Jacksonville. 
They often came to our city, both well dressed. Each 
came in his carriage, with fine horses and colored 
drivers. Mr. Lincoln, up to this time, had only been a 
captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk Indian War, 
and one term a member of the legislature. He did 
not then look to me like a prospective Governor, when 
I had in my mind's eye those stately gentlemen, Ed- 
wards and Duncan. But it seems that my father's 
foresight was much better than his son's vision, for 



ill a little over twenty years this poorly clad and un- 
known young man was the imperial ruler of a country 
of fifty million people, commanding an army of a 
million men — a more effective and potential army 
than Caesar or Napoleon ever marshaled in battle array. 

Of Mr. Lincoln's birth and ancestry little need be 
said — a subject about which he was never communi- 
cative. His early days in Hardin county were days 
of poverty and obscurity; pathetic years of childhood, 
which he never cared to recall and linger over as a 
pleasant memory. Doubtless from all accounts, that 
are laid before us, during his first seven years of life 
in the log cabin on Nolan's creek, he was poorly clad 
and scantily fed. After his father hioved to Spencer 
county, Indiana, he lived in a little half-faced camp 
for one year; the second year a log cabin took the 
place of the camji, but it was without window, door 
or floor for some time. 

Food was abundant, game jjlenty; deer, bear, wild 
turkey, ducks, fish in every stream, wild fruits of 
many kinds in the summer months, and these fruits 
were dried for winter use, potatoes about the only 
vegetable raised and corn dodger the daily bread of 
the Lincoln household. The supply of groceries and 
cooking utensils were limited. His mother died in 
1818, of the prevailing disease of that country, known 
as the milk-sick. 

In 1819, Lincoln's father went back to Kentucky, 
and returned with a second wife, in the person of 
widow Johnson; with her came three children. She 
was a woman of gentleness, thrift and energy. The 



new wife at once made the cabin homelike, she taught 
the children habits of of cleanliness and comfort. 

The boy became very fond of nis new mother and 
remained so all of the years of his life. After he 
was elected President and before leaving home to be 
sworn into office, he paid his mother a last farewell 
visit; in speaking of her he always called her his ''an- 
gel mother." For ten years after his father's second 
marriage he lived at home, laboring on the farm, ex- 
cept when his father hired him out to his neighbors 
to hoe corn, pull fodder, harvest grain, cut wood and 
make rails. 

During these years he read more or less, eagerly; 
reading whatever books he could get jjossession of. 
He was hungry for books and read intently all his 
spare time, having no taste or inclination for hunting 
wild game. 

In 1830, his restless father again moved, this time 
to Illinois and settled in Sangamon county. Here 
they built a log cabin and made rails sufficient to 
fence ten acres of land. 

This was the last work he did for his father. Hav- 
ing now arrived at his majority, he left home and 
started out in the world to shift for himself. 

During the coming winter, he and his step-brother 
John Johnson and his cousin John Hanks, hired out 
to a trader, Denton Offutt, to take and pilot a flat- 
boat down the Mississippi river to New Orleans 
loaded with country j)roduce, which OflPut would 
gather up — produce needed and marketable in the 
Creole city of the south, butter, lard, eggs, bacon, 
pickled pork, etc. 



Failing to purchase a suitable boat, Lincoln and 
his companions built one at Sangamontown, six miles 
northwest of this city. In floating down the Sanga- 
mon river, the boat stuck on the dam built for Rut- 
ledge's mill, just opposite the village of New Salem, 
and for nearly a day it hung bow in the air, stern in 
the water — shipwreck seemed almost certain. The 
villagers of Salem turned out in a body to see what 
the strangers would do to save their boat ; while the 
sight-seers suggested and advised, a tall big fellow of 
the crew, worked out a plan of relief and succeeded 
in tilting his craft over the dam and proceeded on his 
trip down the river. This was Lincoln's second trip 
to New Orleans. There he witnessed a public sale 
of slave negroes. A young mulatto female was 
placed on the block; as the auctioneer was calling 
for the highest bidder, man after man walked 
around the block, handling the girl, as you would feel 
the points and parts of a horse; Lincoln turned and 
walked away, and expressed his hatred of slavery, say- 
ing to his step-brother, "if I ever get a chance to hit 
the system of slavery, I will hit it damned hard." 
He kept his word — the proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion. 

There was something about the people and village 
of Salem which fascinated Lincoln. On his return 
from the south after a brief visit to his old home, he 
came to Salem, settled there and spent the next seven 
years of his early and eventful life. Here he lived 
and loved, worked and sported, laughed and joked, 
grew merry and serious, as the varied moods im- 
pressed his mental disposition. Here he made fast 



friends and commenced his wonderful political career. 
Here he, as clerk of the election board performed his 
first official act. 

Here he became acquainted with Green and Arm- 
strong, Kelso and Dimcan, Alley and Carmer, Hern- 
don and Radford, Hill and McNamara, Rutledge and 
Berry and many other pioneers of the vicinity. 

New Salem soon became to him, what Venice was 

to Byron: 

"A fairy city of the heart, 

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart." 

There were to be found the best specimens of the 
pioneer settler; hardy, industrious, kind and courage- 
ous men and women. As a physician of early days, I 
knew and loved them intimately and well. I knew 
their foibles which were superficial, and their virtues 
which were innate and loveable. 

Mr. Lincoln's first permanent employment was as a 
clerk in the store of Offutt, where he continued until 
the spring of 1832, when the Indian war was opened, 
by the return of Chief Black Hawk and his band to 
re-occupy their old homes in the Rock-river country. 

The Governor calling for soldiers, Lincoln volun- 
teered and was elected captain of his company. 

After the defeat of Black Hawk at the battle of Bad 
Axe and the close of the war, he returned home, and 
in partnership with Berry bought a store and became 
a merchant in general country trade. He soon dis- 
covered he was not a success as a merchant, sold out 
his stock of goods and was appointed postmaster by 
President VanBuren. To help out a living, he became 
a deputy surveyor and was twice elected a member of 



the Legislature; also read law and appeared before 
justices of the peace in legal suits. Was licensed to 
practice law. 

In the spring of 1837 he moved to Springfield, com- 
menced his enlarged life as a lawyer, and entered into 
partnership with Major John T. Stuart. Here he had 
to meet and contend at the bar with the brightest and 
ablest lawyers of the state, such as Logan, Baker, 
Trumbull, Hardin, Purple and Douglas. And it is 
not going too far to say that he held his own before 
judge and jury with the best legal talent of the state. 

To show his care of trust money, I would state that 
after he had moved to our city, Mr. James Brown, the 
traveling postoffice agent, came into Robert Irwin's 
store and inquired where he could find Mr. Lincoln, 
former postmaster at New Salem, that he wished to 
collect the money of the United States still in his 
possession. William Butler being present said, "Mr. 
Brown, I will see Mr. Lincoln at my house at dinner; 
he will call on you at the hotel and pay you." At 
dinner Mr. Butler told him what Mr. Brown's business 
was. Thinking Mr. Lincoln might not have the 
money to settle his postoffice collections, Butler said: 
'•I will let you have the money to settle up your post- 
office account." Lincoln replied, "I thank you very 
much, but I have all the money in my trunk which 
belongs to the government." The identical silver, 
quarters and twelve and a half cent pieces were safely 
put away in an old sock in his trunk, ready any day 
for immediate settlement of his official account. If 
every man handling government money was as care- 
ful, there would be no defalcations. 

Mrs. Dallman, wife of ex-Alderman Dallman, loves 



10 



to tell how kind both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were to 
her years ago when she lived in her small home just 
across the street from them. It was when little Thomas 
Lincoln was a nursing child; she was very sick, had 
no help and an infant girl to care for. She says Mrs. 
Lincoln often nursed her little child, and Mr. Lincoln 
rocked the cradle until her child was happily asleep. 

There was not a particle of avarice in our subject's 
mental make-up. Greediness of wealth was absolutely 
foreign to his nature. . He wanted money sufficient to 
pay ordinary living expenses of his household, but he 
cared not for gold just to possess and handle. 

To illustrate this statement 1 will relate a little story 
of our college society of Illinois College and his con- 
nection with said society. It was customary prior to 
the civil war, for the literary society to give a series 
of lectures, the profits from which were expended to 
purchase books for the library. Mr. Lincoln was en- 
gaged to deliver one of the lectures. After the lecture 
was over and the audience left, he recognized the fact 
that the attendance was not large and therefore the 
receipts at the door must be limited. Mr. Lincoln 
with a kind smile said to the president of the society, 
"I have not made much money for you tonight.'" In 
reply the financial officer said: "When we pay for 
rent of the hall, music and advertising, and your com- 
pensation, there will not be much left to buy books 
for the library." "Well, boys, be hopeful, pay me my 
railroad fare and fifty cents for my supper at the hotel 
and we are square."" That was our subject's kindness 
and liberality all over; yet at that day he was not 
burdened with cash and could have found good use 

11 



for a few extra dollars. He thought the poor society 
needed the money more than he did. 

Mr. Lincoln, after his arrival in our city, boarded 
at the home of Mr. Butler, the second house west of 
my father's home. I often observed him as he passed 
to and fro from his meals to his office. He usually 
walked alone, his head inclined as if he was absorbed 
in deep thought, unmindful of surrounding objects 
and persons. Though he had his wonderful gift of 
humor, I venture to assert that in the long run of 
years life was to him serious and earnest. 

He once said to Joshua Speed, his close friend: 
•'Speed, when I am dead, I wish my friends to remem- 
ber that I always pluck a thorn and plant a rose when 
in my power." He roomed with Speed over his store 
on the west side of the public square. 

If asked what in my opinion, were the marked quali- 
ties of his mental organization,orinother words, what 
were the salient traits of his character, I would reply, 
his kindness and patience, integrity, humor, patriotism 
and ambition, and his moral and physical courage. 

His integrity is proved by all his acts, private, pub- 
lic and official. He never betrayed a cause or party, 
friend or the people. His kindness and humanity 
were innate, he was always considerate of man, beast 
or bird. He was ambitious, seeking position, ex- 
pecting to benefit his country. 

His moral courage was potent and sublime, as often 
shown in the Legislature of Illinois, Congress of the 
United States, and in his wise and efficient administra- 
tion of the Federal Government, in the most critical 
days of the civil war. 



12 



His love of liberty, justice and right was visible and 
manifest to all, in every purpose and act during his 
entire life. During the long and dreary days of the 
war, his patience and kindly heart, won the admira- 
tion of all his countrymen. By his decision of char- 
acter and avowal of his convictions of a slaveholder's 
right to hold a slave in the territories of the Union, 
he lost a senatorial race in 1858, only to win the 
Presidency in 1860. 

I venture to sa,y that no man was less elated by 
prosperity, or depressed by adversity. He was so 
mentally balanced, that he could calmly share the 
triumph or endure defeat. 

Probably, it is not going too far, when I state my 
opinion that the law was not his first love; that he 
adopted the profession of law, as a means of a liveli- 
hood, and yet more likely he adopted the law as the 
most direct road to increase his prospects for pro- 
motion in his political career. I think he always felt 
much more interested in, and loved to discuss political 
and public issues and affairs of state, than he did pure 
legal suits about business and dollars, between man 
and man. 

He was anti-slavery in heart and head, had intense 
feelings on this question, and the grievous wrong of 
slavery aroused his kind nature, to earnest opposition 
to its spread and extension into new territory. He 
could consent to abide its existence in the States, 
where the constitution of the States protected the sys- 
tem, but from his early manhood, like Henry Clay, he 
hoped for its ultimate extinction, either by coloniza- 

1.3 



tion to Africa, or by money compensation to the slave- 
holder. 

Members of the Springfield bar, the Judges of our 
State courts and United States courts, all coincide in 
the opinion, that Mr. Lincoln was a very able and per- 
suasive lawyer before a jury when he was on the right 
side of a case, and a very poor lawyer when his client 
was in the wrong. 

There was in him that innate sense of justice which 
disabled him when on the wrong side. He could not 
successfully attempt to make black white. 

He has been known to refuse his legal service, when 
satisfied that his applicant had the wrong side of the 
case. 

Mr. Lincoln's language and style was Anglo-Saxon, 
he was not a classical scholar, his words were English 
pure and clear. He had great power of condensation, 
used no unnecessary words. The common people 
understood his arguments. 

He summed up the doctrine of squatter sovereignty 
advocated by Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska issue, 
in these few words "that if a man choose to enslave 
another, no third man shall be allowed to object." 

You may read many different lives of him, but you 
will find little said of him as a lawyer. 

His enduring fame belongs to him, as an anti- 
slavery debater, a pure-minded and far-sighted state- 
man, a ruler of men. The wonderful contrast in his 
first and last years, best illustrates the possibilities of 
American citizenship. The poor boy who could scar- 
cely reach the lowest round of the ladder, as am an in 

14 



only middle life, stood upon the top most round, then 
by his tragic death, passed up to the sky. 

Whenever Mrs. Hill of New Salem heard any re- 
marks about Lincoln and Ann Riitledge, she woxild 
tell of her recollections of a quilting bee at Salem. 
Lincoln was sitting next to Ann, as the girl was in- 
dustriously using her needle, Abraham was softly 
whisijering in her ear, and Mrs. Hill was wont to say, 
that she noticed the rose color flushed in the cheek of 
Ann — her heart throbbed quicker and her soul thrilled 
with a joy as old as the world itself. 

Upon the same subject, I will relate what Isaac 
Cogdal tells of his interview with Lincoln. In De- 
cember, after his election as president, Cogdal called 
to see him. He requested his old friend from Salem 
to wait until his callers from a distance went to their 
hotels, so that he might inquire about his old friends 
in Menard county. All visitors having retired, they 
both drew their chairs close to the fire. There in the 
quiet twilight Lincoln inquired after his old Salem 
friends, their sons and daughters, when and whom 
they had married and how they had prospered. When 
he had told Lincoln all, he said, "Mr. Lincoln, I 
would like to ask you one question." He promptly 
replied, "Well, Isaac, if it is a fair question, I will 
answer it." "What is the truth about you and Ann 
Rutledge?" "Isaac, I dearly loved the girl, and I 
never to this day hear the name Rutledge called with- 
out fond memories of those long past days." 

He was modest, rather retiring than pushing him- 
self forward in society, never sought to be conspicuous. 

Even after his great debate with Douglas and after 

15 



he had been nominated for president by a great party, 
he was disinclined to notoriety. When Mr. Scripps of 
the Chicago Tribune came to Springfield to visit him 
and gather from him the materials for a campaign 
biography, he hesitated whether to aid the publica- 
tion. He said to Mr. Scripps, "there is no romance, 
nothing heroic in my early life, the story of my life 
can be condensed into one line, and that line you can 
find in Gray's Elegy." "The short and simple annals 
of the poor." "This is all you or any one can make 
out of me or my early life." What pathos — recalling 
early days of childhood — years of penury and want ! 

I witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, on the 
5th of March 1861 . The first three days of March 
were quite warm. Sunday March 3rd was a delightful 
spring day, the soft mild breeze from the south, which 
came up to Washington city to mark the quiet Sab- 
bath as the last day of James Buchanan in the White 
House and his loosening hold on the reins of the Fed- 
eral Union, was springlike and filled with fragrance 
from the land of the orange and magnolia. 

After a crimson sunset, the wind seemed to rise 
and came in fitful gusts, quick and sharp as the even- 
ing advanced; during the evening of Sunday, the wind 
shifted to the west, and on the morning of the 4th the 
sky was over cast with clouds, and the wind came from 
the north. By ten o'clock the temperature had fallen 
80 degrees, but notwithstanding the frosty, biting air, 
Pennsylvania avenue was crowded with a mass of 
moving humanity. The liberty loving people had 
come from New England, from the great central states, 

16 



from the far off west, from the valley of the Ohio and 
Mississippi. 

They had come 100,000 strong, not to witness the 
pomp and ceremony of the crowning of a king, but 
the simplicity of the inauguration of the chosen ruler 
of a free rei3ublic. 

In the presence of the assembled citizens, Abraham 
Lincoln, with Stephen A. Douglas and Edward Baker 
on either side, with head bare and hand uplifted, was 
sworn to support, maintain and defend the constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

So long as liberty remains; so long as Christianity 
and civilization are the legacy of the race, will history 
record how faithfully that sacred vow was fulfilled. 

That cold bleak day fitly illustrated, the stormy 
and tempestuous path which he was compelled to 
to walk, that uneven, perilous road, he trod cautiously, 
waril}^ yet with calmness and fortitude, determined to 
preserve the union of the states. The dark and peril- 
ous days of storm and battle were foreshadowed in the 
forbidding weather of that inauguration day. The 
very air was portentous. The rising murmurs of dis- 
content, came up angrily on every breeze wafted 
from Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. These 
murmurings and threatenings, were the prelude to the 
crimson tempest through which Lincoln finally passed 
in triumph, but at what a cost of men and treasure! 

Not until Grant had overwhelmed the south with a 
million of armed men; not until the tramp, tramp of 
Sherman's army had been heard and felt in the very 
heart of the Confederacy. 

Those days have gone, never to return. 

n 



The competition of the sections will be in the future, 
in the line of education, the industries and achieve- 
ments in the arts of peace, which will make the 
republic of Washington foremost of the nations of the 
earth as a great, free, enlightened and prosperous 
country. 

Probably, each of the ladies here assembled, can 
testify for themselves and the world about them, how 
they enjoy the little stories relating to the domestic 
affairs of any family of prominence. The concerns of 
the Lincoln household are no exception. Right here 
let me say that much of fiction has been interwoven 
by historians and papers in tracing and relating little 
incidents which are reported to have occurred in that 
home. 

I am not prepared to say that that home was an 
ideal home, but I do say, without hesitation, that it 
was a happy home. 

The husband was kind and considerate; the wife 
bright, impulsive, educated, cultured, industrious and 
loveable, a good wife and fond mother. 

This much I desire to say, on his birthday, in the 
Lincoln home, where many of us, his and her life-long 
friends have partaken of their hospitality, and know 
whereof we speak. 

Lincoln was a man of peace ; he never sought a con- 
troversy or quarrel; he never retreated under fire. 

As a whig and as a republican, he did not always 
agree with all the policies of his party, and he did 
submit often to some measures which he did not ap- 
prove. But on any vital question, where a principle 
was involved, the question of slavery and the civil 

18 



rights of man, he was immovable, constant and stead- 
fast. 

His religious views and opinions have been dis. 
cussed again and again. I believe that Mr. Lincoln 
was by nature a deeply religious man. But I have 
seen no evidence that he ever accepted the formulated 
creed of any sect or denomination. I should say that 
all churches had his respect and good wishes. 

What would have been the history of reconstruc- 
tion, had Mr. Lincoln survived to serve through his 
second term we cannot tell; but it has often occurred 
to me that the country, and especially the republican 
party, would have escaped much of the humiliation 
and disgrace heaped upon it by the conduct and i^olit- 
ical management of the northern carpet-baggers, who, 
through the support of the ignorant blacks of the 
south, desjooiled and dominated the political control 
of the offices, state and federal, of many southern 
states. The kind and firm hand of Lincoln would 
never have i3ermitted this blot of carpet-baggism upon 
the fair fame of our reconstruction of the states. 

In the heart of that noblest of men there was no 
hatred of any man or section of his country; there 
dwelt sweet peace and sublime humanity. 

The restoration of the Union he lived for and died 
for. In the love and reverence of his countrymen 
through all coming time, he stands side by side with 
George Washington. 

Much of interest could be related of those long and 
dreary years of the rebellion — of Lincoln's masterly 
ability, tact and wariness as a ruler of men, in hold- 
ing in harmony for the prosecution of war and the 

19 



union of the States, many diverse elements which 
were to be found in eastern, western and border 
states, but his conduct and management of affairs, 
civil and military, has been told and retold and is 
known to all. 

The closing scene of his life is too cruel to dwell 
upon. With the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, 
just as a benign peace smiled upon a reunited country 
and alluring prospects of prosperity, tranquility and 
contentment were spread out before his delighted 
vision, and his evening of life promised to be blest 
with the love and reverence of a grateful people — 
darkness and death came. In an instant, his brain 
was paralyzed by the bullet of the assassin; uncon- 
scious he passed from life to death; thus ful- 
filling, fancy, vision or foreboding, which came 
to him years before. In the deepning twilight, 
when reclining for repose, on his couch in his own 
home, he was musing in silence and sadness on the 
past, present and future, he beheld on the mirror of 
of his room two contrasting views of his own features, 
one in the vigor of health, one wearing the paleness 
of death. This vision disturbed him — he spoke to 
his wife about it, and seemed to regard it as an ill 
omen, which portended and forshadowed misfortune. 
Probably in a brief time this depressing incident 
vanished from his mind. Strange and mysterious are 
the ways of Providence. We can but submit to the 
supreme will of that infinite intelligence, which made 
and governs the universe. 

Illinois called for her dead son ; silently, yet in tri- 
umph the body of Lincoln was borne through cities 

20 



and States, all draped in emblems of woe. His pallid 
face, worn with deep lines of care and anxiety, was 
looked upon by tens of thousands. 

Home was reached. The casket was placed in the 
great Hall of the Capitol, so often the silent witness 
of his intellectual combats and triumphs. 

Men, women and children came from all the sur- 
rounding country. The old and young bowed in sor- 
row and anguish, by day and by night pressed close 
around that coffin and gazed for the last time upon 
the well marked and familiar features of that kind 
face. That heart which had always throbbed "in 
charity for all. and malice to none," was now stilled 
in death. 

There is little doubt as to the place, which will be 
assigned the war President, in the final judgment of 
mankind. Let us believe, nor is the belief in vain, 
that the pitiless and impartial historian, when he has 
measured and weighed and analyzed, the great his- 
toric characters of nations, will deliberately pro- 
nounce that among the marked rulers of men, he was 
not surpassed by any statesman of the modern world. 

All that is physical and mortal, now reposes in 
quiet. Oak Ridge, in that crypt of Fame, beneath 
stately monument of granite, erected by a grateful 
state. 

The thought, intellect and spiritual, of that heart 
and soul survives in the unknown beyond, and lives 
on with the ages. 

In the world's pantheon of heroes and martyrs, there 
will be graven by a cunning hand the name Abraham 
Lincoln. 

21 



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